The person in charge of coordinating the reconstruction of the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral after its fire in April 2019, General Jean-Louis Georgelin, has died from a mountain accident in the French Pyrenees, the authorities confirmed this Saturday.
Georgelin, who was 74 years old and was hiking, suffered a fall near the Faustin pass at an altitude of 2,650 meters in the Ariège department, sources from the Gendarmerie said, quoted by France Télévisions.
The general, who had been chief of the General Staff of the French Army from 2006 to 2010, was appointed in December 2019 by the president, Emmanuel Macron, at the head of the public body set up for the restoration and conservation of Notre Dame.
From that position of president, his main missions were to guarantee the correct development of the works, with the deadlines that had been set, and to inform the public and also the donors of the progress of the works.
After the fire on April 15, 2019 that damaged what is one of the most emblematic monuments of the French capital, the goal is to reopen it to worship and visitors at the end of 2024.
Macron lamented on X (former Twitter), the death of Georgelin: “With the death of General Jean-Louis Georgelin, the nation has lost one of its great soldiers. France, one of its great servants. And Notre-Dame, the architect of its rebirth”.
Georgelin had trained at the prestigious Saint Cyr academy, where he entered in 1967 and opted for the infantry. He was precisely the commander of the Mutzig infantry regiment before joining the General Staff of the Army. After being promoted to brigadier general in 1997, he joined the Stabilization Force for the former Yugoslavia (SFOR).
In 2002 he became the chief of the private General Staff of the President of the Republic and from there he went four years later to become the chief of the Army General Staff.
